1/100 Halcon

For my first wooden model ship, I purchased one of these off Aliexpress a few months back for the princely sum of $25 (about £19, so I guess it might even qualify for the Christmas competition, but I rather doubt it would be finished in time.). It included the brass cannons, but strangely not the cast anchors which I had to purchase seperately from another supplier.

The quality of the parts seems OK, but the Chinese "instructions" are more than a little cryptic. Emailing the supplier eventually got a rather better set of instructions (mainly annotated photos) in english, but not entirely for this version of the kit (there seem to be several versions floating around.)

The basic framework fitted together fairly easily, with the deck holding the frames square to the keel. I used some ply offcuts from the frets to fill in the space in front of the first frame, and filed it back smooth, so as to support the planking (they even mentioned this in the instructions)

Next stage is to bend up the bulwarks, and the ply used does not want to bend at all. Even soaking for long periods had little effect, so I bit the bullet and purchased a plank bender, which cost almost as much as the kit ! I'm still playing with this, so more later, but meanwhile I couldn't resist staining and assembling the rather nice turned brass cannons included in the kit

The finished size is 400mm (L) x 150mm (W) x 300mm (H). It is indeed a bargain (you can get the older version without lifeboat and the brass cannons sometimes on offer for about £4.50 (including postage from China). Currently it's a little more as it's Christmas season and they make nice presents.

"Halcon" is the spanish for "Falcon" or "Eagle", and it was a 210 tons displacement American type topsail schooner brig registered 1840 in Malta for the transport of silk. So that makes it a Maltese Falcon